UNITED NATIONS

Macedonia is symbolically important to Greece since it is the home of legendary heroes like Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great.

Pol Pot's right-hand man, Nuon Chea, the No. 2 leader of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, under whom an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians were killed in the 1970s, on Monday told a court his regime were not bad people, denying responsibility for the deaths, instead placing the blame on Vietnam.

The title of Miss Earth 2011 has been handed to Miss Ecuador, Olga Alava.

Iran's military said on Sunday it had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, a military source told state television.

Iran's Foreign Ministry believes that if the West seriously considered blocking Tehran's ability to export oil, the global price of crude would more than double, Foreign Ministry representative Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying on Sunday.

The U.N.'s climate chief said that she believes countries can snap the deadlock that has lasted for years and sign up to fresh and binding commitments to cut greenhouse gases.

At least two dozen people have died in renewed fighting in the northern part of Syria between security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and members of the Free Syria Army (FSA), amid fears the country is descending into a state of civil war.

Paris officials went to great pains to explain that this was only a temporary security measure.

Overnight clashes between security forces and army defectors in northern Syria left 15 people dead early Saturday, activists said. Seven were soldiers, five were defectors, and three were civilians.

The United Nations High Commissioner for human rights on Friday urged the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands following a reveal of evidence by an independent panel that suggests the country's security forces have committed crimes against humanity as it attempts to clamp down on an eight-month-old uprising.

HRW said the bloodiest incident happened on November 26, the final day of the election campaign.

Thaksin Shinawatra, the former-Prime Minister of Thailand who was overthrown in a 2006 coup and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai, could soon be getting his passport back.

Hilary Clinton is in Burma (Myanmar) meeting with ruling and opposition leaders in an effort to promote democracy.

President Barack Obama vowed to boost U.S. efforts to fight AIDS with a new target of providing treatment to 6 million people worldwide by 2013, up from an earlier goal of 4 million.

Boko Haram, Nigeria's militant Islamic insurgency, is now an emerging threat to the United States, a new congressional report says.

The lesson here is that anything that holds any data of any value must be protected, said Alan Woodward, computer expert.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg seems to think the NYPD is his own army, according to remarks he made at MIT Nov. 29.

About 5.38-million people in the country are HIV-positive, or 10.6 percent of population.

The United Nations has announced that Mexican mariachi music, Chinese shadow puppetry and poetic dueling competitions in Cyprus are among several cultural traditions that are both crucial to a living culture and are at risk of dying out, prompting moves to protect and encourage their practice. UNESCO has placed 19 new items on the Intangible Heritage List.

Following the example set by the Arab League and the U.S., Turkey on Wednesday slapped a series of economic and financial sanctions on Syria over the government's continued bloody crackdown on an eight-month uprising.

Between 1990 and 2010, the rate of poverty rate on the continent plunged from 48.4 percent to 31.4 percent; while the rate of indigence (extreme poverty) dropped from 22.6 percent to 12.3 percent.